New York City neighborhoods are often named using acronyms. For example, there’s Tribeca (Triangle Below Canal Street) and SoHo (South of Houston Street).

New on the scene is Crapensta, or the Crap Around Penn Station. When you’re in Crapensta, you’ll know it.

Check out Crapensta twitter for more information about this neighborhood. They seem to have coined the term Crapensta. Brilliant. I think they should create and sell an illustrated map that helps people who live or work in Crapensta find decent places to eat or chill. It could be something whimsical along the lines of Nancy Chandler’s map of Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Buying a Used Car Seems Less Daunting

The idea of buying a used car is daunting to me. Because I live in New York, I have never bought a car. If I were going to buy one, I’d probably look for a used car, but I would have no idea how to evaluate one in a savvy manner. The whole process seems daunting.Read More »

My little brother has just graduated from high school and I was getting crazy about finding a good gift so it’s a topic of my blog post today.
If someone close to you has recently graduated high school, then you might be looking to find a good present to buy the new graduate. While what you can buy will depend on what you can afford and your relationship to the student, you have many options.
If the student is going to college next year, anything that could be useful in college is a great choice, ranging from dorm accessories to entertainment. If the student is not attending college after graduating high school, anything that he or she could use otherwise would make a great gift.

I would also make sure that the student doesn’t have any of these beforehand… there’s nothing more awkward than giving a gift and finding out the person already has it!
Here are a few general areas to think of when deciding what to get:Read More »

Social media has permeated every facet of my life. I stay connected with friends that I haven’t seen since high school or early college days (Facebook). I keep my writing skills sharp with this blog. I throw out fun witticisms to my friends while watching ballgames (Twitter) and network to find my next full-time employment (this blog and LinkedIn). In my current capacity as a social media intern, I even use a little bit of all that to perform my job. Yep, there isn’t one facet of my life that social media doesn’t have a place.

Except the bathroom.

You read that right. The bathroom. I don’t take my laptop into the stall. I don’t carry my cellphone (in fact, I don’t have internet on my cell phone at all) to the shower. And I certainly don’t have a PC hooked-up next to the toilet.

And that got me to thinking. (Uh, not that kind of thinking) Unplugging.

Strange as it may sound, getting completely away from technology for a few minutes, hours, even days, can be fantastic. According to some studies, it can even be healthy (apparently, social media can warp our brains )

I always knew that 27 was going to be huge year in my life, the one where I would crystallize my future. I mean Van Gogh started painting at 27; Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were all immortalized at 27. Here I am, about to end a year of self-discovery and let me tell you, I found my muse. I conquered 27 at I am officially about to conquer 28!

Big news, I decided to move to Houston, I have a job already, I will be leading GED courses there in Houston and helping people to pass the GED exam. So it’s time to say goodbye to my many friends. Who doesn’t know how to say goodbye? It’s the polar opposite of hello; one of the first words that we learn as children. We don’t feel threatened by the feeling when we say goodbye to our parents at school because we know at 3:00 pm sharp, we are en route to say hello again. When do we make this shift of blissful ‘goodbye’ innocence to cognitive ‘goodbye’ awareness?

Somewhere along the line of our relationships that extend beyond family, we learn that goodbye doesn’t have any guarantees. We may or may not ever say hello to that person, that place or that thing again. Accepting this reality is perhaps one of the toughest things I am learning today.

My life is full of goodbyes. I started moving around the world when I was 14 years old. From that moment, I knew that every hello needed to be more passionate, more sincere, more welcoming. I would inevitably be leaving my friends, my new favorite city and my new life. This has been both a blessing and curse as I’ve grown older.Read More »

This is probably the most frequent question that writers, innovators and creative people get asked. One of the most popular answers is ‘From Life’. Some other answers are: dreams, television, conversations, walks, day dreaming, music, reading, and a whole lot more. The answer varies from writer to writer and basically comes down to: From Life.

Mine come in dreams some of the time. These ones are always interesting because I’ll find myself having a marathon of dreams for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Serial dreams, where the dream I had last night will pick up tonight as soon as I hit the dream realm. One dream after another until the entire story- movie has been played out and I’ve jotted it down in my journal.

I don’t always recognize a dream as a story idea right away. Sometimes it takes a couple of nights and a little pondering over my dream journal to figure it out. Once it hits me, though, I’m off on a marathon and the clarity of the dream becomes technicolor with surround sound. Pretty awesome.Read More »

As some of you are aware, I am now in limbo between second and final year – it’s the summer holidays and I’m not due back at university until October, so I have a load of free time on my hands. And a lot of this time, so far, has been spent thinking about the future and what I want to do. I know I want to work in arts marketing. I know I want to be fairly well placed on the career ladder. And I also know that I don’t want to spend the time after graduating at home mulling over the possibilities that lay ahead. I’m desperate for a job – as in, a proper job. Not a summer job, or a part time job. I’m desperate to get my degree and then head into employment doing something that has made the past 3 years worth it. I have, therefore, itchy feet syndrome.